


i want to dream like this with you forever

by sindubu



Category: I.O.I (Band), TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 03:45:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7874929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sindubu/pseuds/sindubu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the final eleven are announced -<i> Kim Chungha, fourth place</i> - she falls back on her bed with an overwhelming sense of relief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i want to dream like this with you forever

**Author's Note:**

> i have a lot of feelings about hirai momo and a lot of feelings about kim chungha and about hirai momo and chungha _together_ as trainees once upon a time, so this happened. title comes from snsd's "forever," like how i want to cry ugly tears forever when i listen to it.

They trained together, once. 

It’s not something either of their fans pick up on - at the same time nothing Momo knows how to forget. Sometimes, when she gets enough sleep to dream, the memories from that time in her life take over. 

She’s sixteen in a new country, clinging to Minatozaki Sana’s arm because the girl picks up on Korean faster than her while she’s still gesturing vaguely to get her words across. Worry ticks like a pulse underneath frustration - did she make a mistake coming here? - and no one can say she doesn’t have a hard time adjusting. The only time things make sense is when she’s in the practice room, shoes squeaking against the polished floors while others admire on and _look,_ Momo wants to say, _look, I can do this. Look, I’m not useless._

Momo doesn’t know much Korean, but when a girl approaches her in the cafeteria and offers her bread, still warm as she holds it in her hands, she’s caught off guard as Sana nudges her and whispers a translation in her ear - _“She wants to dance with you.”_

The first time Momo feels like she belongs in Korea is in the practice room with Kim Chungha, sweaty and flushed and laughing, too - a language she doesn’t need an interpreter for. Momo is on the floor, tying her hair up into a ponytail as Chungha plops onto the ground beside her, reaching for her hands. Her eyebrows furrow in concentration as clumsy Japanese rolls off her tongue, _“Let’s be friends.”_

“Okay,” Momo nods, and this is what Nayeon unnie had meant, she thinks, about finding others at the company to get along with. It happens in a moment, between two people who share the same dream, and it runs deep from the start in a way other relationships can’t. 

This is what they have in common: both of them scrambling through the days and chasing their dreams with tired feet wearing down the soles of their shoes and pushing each other when homesickness is a dark and lonely tunnel until they feel the sun on their skin once more. 

They’re kids. They’re trainees. They can only be one or the other. Momo watches Chungha stuff half a coffee bread into her mouth at once (the other half is hers) and thinks - whatever they are, it’s together. 

 

 

 

“Oh?” a new trainee half her size perks up over a passing comment about how only a few months ago, Momo only knew a handful of phrases at best. Now, she’s able to speak longer, but still simple, sentences, understand most of the jokes the other trainees makes over lunch. “Unnie,” Chaeyoung’s mouth bulges with rice, “you’re good!”

Jihyo passes her a napkin as Momo smiles shyly at the praise that goes around the table. Sana and Dahyun join in, too, but she keeps her head ducked and staring at her own plate until the girl beside her chimes in. 

“She’ll make everyone fall in love in radio shows,” Chungha adds, focusing on the bit of chicken left on her plate as Momo looks up. She works hard for compliments - from their instructors as well as the other trainees - but the dancer’s words always hit home a little too close, somewhere she tucks safe in a vault inside her chest during the moments she’s not so sure.

Chungha talks like her debut is inevitable, but to be fair, it’s the way Momo talks about her in return. Maybe everything about her gives away how she feels about Chungha, the way she orbits around the girl like earth orbits around the sun - the brightest star of all. 

 

 

 

The day Chungha leaves JYP Entertainment is the day the trainers move her from the regular trainee group to the ready to debut group. Momo jumps a foot into the air and asks if they’ve told Chungha yet, because if she’s made it then the other girl must have as well. One of the trainers looks at her strangely and before she can get a proper explanation, she’s out the door running.

Her chest feels emptier than a black hole, and for the rest of the day Nayeon keeps an arm wrapped around her shoulder. Her jaw is clenched tight, giving away how upset she is ( _“I told her to say goodbye to you”_ ), but she pretends otherwise for her. A small part of Momo recognizes as much, touched by the older girl’s loyalty, but she still needs to press her palms against her eyes to will the tears to stop.

 

 

 

Months pass, then a year. The group of girl trainees they have ready to debut only grows, with no actual preparations to do so in sight. Momo only gets older, but they tell her the same thing - _you’re ready._ She isn’t as sure as the first time they told her so. 

There’s an announcement. A reality competition. Sixteen of them entered.

Momo wonders where Chungha is in all this, if she’s still training, or if this is the fate she was running from.

(There’s no reason to think so, but sometimes, when it’s late and she can’t sleep, she wonders:

_Was it me?_ )

 

 

 

Mina and Sana cry almost as much as she does, when she’s eliminated.

“I’m okay,” she tells them backstage through a watery smile, the other girls purposefully blocking most of the PD’s cameras. “It’s okay,” Momo says, even when she spends a week back at the company doing nothing in the practice room but stare at the mirrors and think - what now? There’s a moment she thinks of flying back to Japan, but she thinks of her parents’ faces and can’t book the ticket. She can’t even tell them, and Momo ignores her phone for that week and hopes they don’t read up on the broadcast when it finally airs. 

She closes her eyes and imagines herself as a broken compass, spinning and aimless, and not for the first time, Momo wishes she felt grounded, secure - that there is an end to everything in this world and feeling lost is a condition and not a state of being. 

The weeks pass. Another girl comes back with trembling shoulders and a heart too heavy to be carried on its own. Momo reaches for her bags to help her unpack. _Nothing makes sense,_ she tells Momo one day over lunch, alone at their table - a shared kinship over missed chances and regret, the other trainees giving them a large degree of distance in their loss.

Momo nods in agreement, picking at the rest of her food until she stands to throw it away. Nothing makes sense again, and she has always been a creature of habit, finding solace in the practice rooms and drowning out her insecurities to the beat of a song and the way the rhythm moves her body. 

There is no girl this time to meet her on the floor, offer friendship in exchange for a year of memories she can’t get back. Momo thinks of everything else she’s lost in the past few years alone, channels the hurt in all that she does like she can use it all up, like her heart will get exhausted soon enough. 

The trainers at the company notice, and Momo goes from standing in the crowd to on stage, unable to stop herself from breaking down this time. The girls - her members - surround her and if nothing else, if she is still directionless, still unsure of her place in this world, there are now eight others there to hold her hand through it.

 

 

 

There are whispers of a comeback in spring when the first episode of Produce 101 airs. She’d heard about it through Chaeyoung, and Momo ends up sandwiched between Jeongyeon and Jihyo near the end as they sit down to watch the first broadcast for _Pick Me_ by the trainees themselves. They’re being filmed for their reactions by a cameraman to support Somi, so Chaeyoung and the other girls that know her better are in the middle. And right there, beside one of the other girls, is Kim Chungha.

Momo leans into Jeongyeon, face pressed into her shirt, feeling a little dazed even as her mind races. She tries to convince herself she mistook her for what was really someone else, but when the cameraman calls cut and tells them he has the footage he needs she reaches for her phone and types into a search engine. Her fingers shake as the result loads. 

__

_Kim Chungha, Produce 101 trainee from M &H Entertainment. _

A small hand covers her own and she looks up, catching sight of her pale face mirrored in the girl’s eyes. Mina had joined the company after Chungha left, but she’d heard about her - from the others, from Momo on late nights when the truth left her mouth with thoughts of a girl with soft brown eyes and a sweet smile. She’s been so busy, Momo thinks, since debuting, but she’s never been busy enough not to miss her. 

Mina doesn’t ask if it’s her. Instead, her gaze lingers on Momo alone, a focus that would make her self conscious if not for the fact she feels like her world has just turned upside down. “Are you okay?”

And Momo stops to think about it. She thinks of Sixteen, of how fighting herself for two months that way nearly destroyed her. Produce 101 will go on almost twice as long. How creators of the show will call it nothing short of creative genius, that even the girls that don’t make the final cut will have gained exposure they wouldn’t get anyone else - at a cost Momo knows too well, wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy. 

But Chungha doesn’t want to see her, made that clear years ago when she left Momo without so much as a goodbye. She wants to be made of steel and spite - _you can’t run from fate forever_ \- but she is made of soft edges and concern instead with every worrying thought she has if she’ll be okay. Mina laces their fingers together and squeezes, forgets the answer that the other girl knows anyway.

No, she’s not. 

 

 

 

(“Somi’s in second place this week,” Sana murmurs quietly to her over breakfast as she stares intently at her phone, “but you weren’t checking just for her, were you?”)

 

 

 

Momo doesn’t watch the final broadcast. She doesn’t think she can put herself through it - neither can most of the others, the show bringing up memories they all share of moments better left in the shadows - but she checks the rankings week after week. When the final eleven are announced - _Kim Chungha, fourth place_ \- she falls back on her bed with an overwhelming sense of relief.

“Congratulations, Chungha-yah,” she whispers to no one, slipping out into the early morning for breakfast on her own. The owners at the bakery near the company recognize her, and first bite of the coffee bread she chews is sweeter than she’d remembered.

I.O.I doesn’t end up promoting for their first single, but Momo looks for her anyway, in the halls of music shows and ending stages, she doesn’t know how not to. She tells herself just because they’re both idols now, doesn’t mean they have to meet. She almost convinces herself she doesn’t even want to.

 

 

 

When they meet again, it’s broadcast. 

She’d read the article about how Chungha would be joining Hit The Stage, but reading about it and seeing it in person is different. She’s smaller than she remembers, and Chungha folds her hands together like she’s nervous and Momo’s never experienced deja vu this way before. Their history together is watered down as rival trainees, and Momo bows her head with a small, humorless smile. 

She glances at Chungha out of the corner of her eye, trying to correct the MC with a furtive shake of her head, but they’re called for a dance battle anyway. Momo tries to block out the noise of the audience and focus, but there’s a voice behind her that breaks through.

“Momo-yah,” Chungha calls, soft but loud and something in her chest aches and stirs awake, remembering. “I’m cheering for you.”

In the end, the crowd makes it clear the other girl is the winner, but Chungha reaches for her first and Momo hesitates for a split second before hugging her back. She can’t remember the last time she’d held her in her arms - if she’d thought to hug Chungha the day she left at breakfast, or after rehearsing together in the practice rooms the night before, and that had hurt just to think about, too. Had she remembered to do everything on earth she’d wanted to do with her, everything she thought she’d have forever to do?

The corners of Chungha’s mouth lift in a smile that reaches her eyes, and Momo knows her answer. Her throat feels tight like something is squeezing it from the inside out, but she won’t let herself let another chance like this pass by.

“Will you meet me later?” 

And Chungha nods, brushing her fingers against her arm so lightly Momo would think it was a passing breeze, adds:

“If you watch my stage?”

She has to get ready for her own. “As long as you watch mine,” Momo says, and Chungha leaves her with a promise, with the missing pieces of her heart returned back to her. She thinks if her heart could talk, it would say _finally._

Finally.

 

 

 

“I thought about you a lot during the program.”

Chungha’s confession comes in a whisper, late at night over snacks and strawberry milk from the convenience store, and it feels like years ago, when they were sixteen and chasing after the same dream. Too much and not enough time has passed since then, and if Momo had to imagine them meeting all over again - sitting on the curb of the street down by her dorm in a sweatpants and a loose shirt - it would look something like this. The two of them together and alone, like heroes meeting at the end of the world, like lovers at the end of a story.

“I was so sorry. I was sorry the day I left, but even more then,” she continues, folding up the plastic wrapper of the cheese bun they’d picked apart and eaten, “I didn’t want to cry on broadcast, but there were so many times I… ” Chungha trails off, glancing over at her. “I imagined how you felt before. And then when you were eliminated…”

Momo offers her a faint half-smile, as bright and small as a lone candle in the dark. “I came back,” she reminds her, keeping her voice light. There are old wounds she still finds herself licking from time to time, but she can joke about it, sometimes.

“You debuted,” Chungha tilts her head, fondness in every word, “I’m so proud of you.”

“You did, too,” says Momo again, looking away to scratch at the label on her water bottle. She thinks of her own members. “You look close with the others. The one thing programs like that do right is the family you make doing them.”

“For a year,” Chungha answers, an edge to her tone that makes her look up. There is something heavy in her expression, and Momo opens her mouth to bring it up before she’s cut off before she has the chance. 

Chungha meets her gaze. “Somi always talks about visiting your dorm,” she bites her lower lip, pausing before finishing. “I used to imagine coming with her all the time, just showing up and saying… ” She shrugs. “Hi.”

At that, Momo smiles in earnest. “Hi,” she repeats, almost playful, “After so long, all you were going to say was ‘hi?’”

“Hi,” Chungha tries again, eyes soft, “I missed you. I was afraid and hurt you and I’m sorry.”

The bottle she’s fussing with drops the ground. Momo takes a few seconds to speak. “Afraid of me?” she asks, hesitation coloring her voice.

“Of everything. Of you debuting without me. Of me debuting without you. Of losing you, and you forgetting me,” the dark haired girl replies. She shakes her head, and Momo knows the irony of their positions has not been lost on either of them. “Guess it didn’t matter in the end.”

“It does,” Momo amends gently. The way her heart is answering her words, too, beating hard enough to make it hurt, tells her as much. “Because you didn’t lose me, and I didn’t forget you, either.” Momo looks at a loss for words, her turn to hesitate.

“How could I forget you? You asked me to be friends in Japanese when I couldn’t even speak.” She’ll never forget the look on the other girl’s face, how concentrated she was even when her pronunciation was slightly off.

Chungha grins. “Those are still the only words I know.”

“Chungha-yah,” Momo murmurs, her name still all too familiar on her lips, “I want to say them to you now, but… “ She reminds herself to breathe, taking in a lungful of air before she finishes. “I don’t want to just be your friend.” 

And under the light of the stars, Chungha says, “So don’t.” She reaches for her shirt, tugging her forward until their noses are brushing, but she pauses, waits for any sign that Momo doesn’t want this with her. 

The thing is - what Chungha doesn’t know, what Momo will have to remember to tell her later, too busy exploring the warmth of her mouth, kissing her like she’s always wanted to - is that she’d never want her anywhere further than arm's distance. The truth is that earth can’t do without the sun and neither can she.


End file.
